Knapp's architect left her mark on Lansing's downtown

Architect Elisabeth Knibbe of Quinn Evans Architects in Ann Arbor led the renovation of the Knapp’s Centre and also worked on the former Ottawa Power Station that is now the headquarters of Accident Fund Holdings Inc.(Photo: LSJ file photo)

The blue and gold tiles on the outside of the Knapp's building held up to the elements for decades, but they couldn't survive water.

Made of metal and cast in concrete, the iconic tiles were an experimental technology in the 1930s and, decades later, the experiment failed. Moisture leaked in and eroded the concrete, and they began to crumble.

Elisabeth Knibbe didn't want to go near them.

"They were basically held in place by metal clips that were rusting," said Knibbe, a principal with Quinn Evans Architects in Ann Arbor and the lead architect on the $36 million redevelopment of the former downtown Lansing department store. "I wouldn't park my car in front of that building."

Says Mark Clouse, general counsel for the developer, Eyde Co.: "Whenever Lis would come to meet over here, she would always park on the other side of the street. She would point up, and I would say, 'OK.' It was not a physical danger. It was her point of trying to make it very clear to me that they had to be replaced.

"It worked."

The solution was to mimic the appearance of those panels, down to the trim that attached them to the concrete, with a modern rain-screen system.

"We are thrilled, needless to say, with how it came out," Knibbe said. "Because when you drive by, you don't know."

It wasn't easy.

Knibbe first saw the empty Knapp's building in 2001, when she was hired by the state to figure out how hard it would be to fix — and whether a historic renovation of what had been one of Michigan's most striking art deco buildings was economically feasible.

She determined that it was, with the right tax incentives thrown in. Meridian Township-based Eyde Co. ultimately received about $10 million in state and federal tax credits to redo the building. With that came a host of requirements tied to specific historic preservation rules.

The challenge, essentially, was to make a historic building state-of-the-art without changing anything.

About 20 percent of the entire $36 million project was put toward replacing the tiles, Clouse said. Both the state and the National Park Service had to sign off on plans.

Among the other issues Knibbe said the team encountered:

• Replacing glass-block windows. They were made with two pieces of glass held together with lead. The lead was failing, however, allowing water to seep in. They also didn't allow views of the outside — a relic of Knapp's department-store days designed to keep shoppers focused inside — and they were 6 feet high to accommodate store displays underneath. Neither of those factors would work for a modern office, so they convinced the Park Service to let them use clear glass. They also raised the floor to bring the windows to eye level, which also allowed them to install heating and cooling systems and network cables beneath it.

• Developers couldn't add extra doors to the storefronts, nor alter the look of the exterior canopy over the entrance near Washington Square and Washtenaw Street.

• Exterior panels emblazoned with the letter "K" are original. So are some of the stainless steel art deco interior railings.

• Knapp's fifth floor sits back, which allowed developers to install exterior balconies with apartments — they can't be seen looking up from the street. South-facing apartments that overlook a surface parking lot have interior walls that intentionally were set back to allow the construction of enclosed, open-ceiling patios while leaving the exterior walls intact.

Knibbe has been doing historic preservation work for nearly three decades. In 2002, she won national honors for The Inn on Ferry Street, a project that transformed four century-old houses in Midtown Detroit into a boutique hotel. In 2012, she won them again for the project that converted the former Ottawa Power Station in Lansing into the corporate headquarters of workers compensation insurer Accident Fund Holdings Inc.

The Knapp's project wasn't the first time she'd left her stamp on Lansing's downtown, but she counts it among the "really special projects" in her career.

"So many people have memories of that building," she said. "They like that it's different and that it's a special thing. What that gives to Lansing, as a downtown continues to come back, is something that other people can become attached to because it's different and because it's special.

"That's something that's difficult to do with a new building," she added. "It's much easier to do with an old building, especially one like this."